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William R. Leigh (1866-1955) the mystic signed W.R. Leigh and dated &copr; 1941, l.r.; also titled The Mystic on the reverse oil on canvas 45 1/4 by 50 1/4 in. (114.9 by 127.6cm.) William Robinson Leigh resolved early in his career to be a truly American painter, but it was not until he made his first trip to the West in 1906 that he found the subject with which he would make his name as an artist. Leigh received his initial training at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore and went on to study at the Royal Academy in Munich. He returned to New York in 1896, taking a job as an illustrator for Scribner's in order to earn a steady income. Leigh often found himself short of money in those early years and was only able to accept Albert Groll's invitation to visit New Mexico after the Santa Fe Railroad agreed to give him a ticket in exchange for a painting of the Grand CaN0on. Leigh was captivated by the landscape and decided on that first trip that he would become a western artist. As D. Duane Cummins writes, "He was thoroughly enchanted. 'I stood alone in a strange and thrilling scene,' he recalled. 'At last I was in the land where I was to prove whether I was fit--worthy of the opportunity--able to do it justice ...' There in New Mexico all of the pieces finally fell into place: the Munich training that so strongly emphasized genre subjects, his own long- standing attraction to nature, and the new idea he had adopted from Moran: that of producing a truly native art" (Cummins, p. 87). Leigh's first glimpse of the West was enough to convince him that this would be his subject from that time forward. The artist could have been describing the dramatic setting of The Mystic when he wrote of a sunset over the Grand CaN0on, "Presently the great shadows began to swallow up the depths, while the light on the upper pinnacles gathered color; a delicate orange and pearl lilac; a great kaleidoscopic array of tints. Now the orange light was changing into rose, to vermilion; the sh